Latte, Cappuccino, Flat White and Cortado: How to Build Your Café's Espresso Menu

Written by Tiny Tiger Coffee

It's the night before your café opens. The menu board is up: latte, cappuccino, flat white, cortado. Your new barista looks at it and asks, "How much milk goes in a flat white?"

Nobody is quite sure. So the next morning all four drinks come out in the same cup with the same milk, and taste the same. A customer who orders a cortado and gets a small latte doesn't complain. They just don't come back for it.

Let's fix that before your first customer walks in.

Every drink starts with the same shot

Here's the simplest way to run a coffee setup: make every milk drink with the same double shot, and change only the milk.

Our house recipe for that shot:

• 18 g of ground coffee in the basket
• 30 to 40 g of espresso out, roughly 40 ml in the cup
• 27 to 30 seconds from pressing the button

If the shot brews faster than 18 seconds, grind finer. Slower than 35 seconds, grind coarser. Change one thing at a time. Our guide to dialling in espresso grind size walks through it step by step.

The four drinks, side by side

What separates a cortado from a flat white, a cappuccino or a latte is the cup size, how much milk goes in, and how deep the foam is.

Steaming adds air, so the milk grows: about a tenth in a cortado or flat white, a fifth in a latte, and up to half in a cappuccino.

Cortado. The strongest of the four. Equal-ish coffee and milk, served small, often in a glass. It suits customers who find a cappuccino too milky.

Flat white. Same shot, a little more milk, and a thin, glossy layer of microfoam. The coffee should still lead. If it tastes like a small latte, the cup is too big.

Cappuccino. The drink most Indian customers know. The thick foam is what makes it a cappuccino, so let in more air as you start steaming.

Latte. The biggest and mildest. Most of the cup is milk, which is why the coffee you use matters most here.

A useful rule for your baristas: the smaller the cup, the more the coffee shows.

Should a cappuccino be a single shot?

Many cafés in India make a single-shot cappuccino with 9 g of coffee to save on beans. In a 180 ml cup, that tastes mostly of warm milk.

Look at the numbers before you decide. In our cost per cup guide, the coffee in a ₹180 single-shot cappuccino costs about ₹13.50. A second shot adds roughly the same again. That's a small cost for a drink that tastes of coffee, and a customer who tastes the difference keeps coming back.

Get the milk right

Milk is most of every drink here, so it shapes the taste.

• Use full cream milk. The fat makes the foam silky and carries the coffee's sweetness. Our guide to the best milk for café coffee in India compares the brands.
• Steam to about 60 to 65°C. Hotter than that and the milk tastes cooked and flat.
• Pour only the milk you need for the drink into the pitcher. Re-steamed milk never foams as well.

Which coffee to use

Milk mutes a lot of flavour, so bright, fruity coffees can disappear in a latte. For milk drinks you want a coffee with chocolate, caramel or nutty notes that come through the milk.

• Toasted Almond is made for milk-based drinks. It's a washed coffee from Chikmagalur, Karnataka, with notes of baked cookies, brown butter and toasted nuts, and it holds its own in a 240 ml latte.
• Caramel Espresso is 100% arabica, and like Toasted Almond, it keeps its sweetness through milk. It's a good choice if your menu leans towards cappuccinos and flat whites.
• Velvet Mocha is our filter blend, 70% coffee and 30% chicory. If you'd like a South Indian filter coffee on the same menu, this is the one.

Before you choose, taste each coffee as a cappuccino as well as an espresso. That's how most of your customers will drink it.

If you want to become a B2B partner of Tiny Tiger

If you want to become a B2B partner of Tiny Tiger, message us on WhatsApp with your city and how many cups you expect to serve a day. We'll help you choose a house coffee for your menu. Café orders start from ₹1,200 a kilo with a 5 kg minimum. Those 5 kg orders ship free to metro cities within 3 working days, and take about 5 days elsewhere.

When you're ready to taste, order a paid Café Sampler, roasted just for you. Order a Café Sampler.

Common questions

What is the difference between a latte and a cappuccino?

Both use the same double shot of espresso. A cappuccino comes in a smaller 180 to 200 ml cup with a thick layer of foam, so it tastes stronger. A latte comes in a larger 240 ml cup with more steamed milk and a thinner layer of foam, so it tastes milder.

How much milk goes in a flat white?

About 100 ml of cold milk, steamed, with a double shot, in a 160 ml cup, finished with a thin layer of microfoam about half a centimetre deep.